“The heavens are not too high,
His praise may thither fly;
The earth is not too low,
His praises there may grow.”
Donne, Crashaw, and Vaughan all share in the quaintness of Herbert and also in his general hymnic impracticability.
Robert Herrick (1591-1674), the singer of rather worldly songs, but a literary artist withal, in his “Litany to the Holy Spirit” reaches more nearly up to the ideal of the singing hymn:
“In the hour of my distress,
When temptations me oppress,
And when I my sins confess,
Sweet Spirit, comfort me.”